Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday Tehran does not seek war with the United States despite mounting tensions between the two arch-enemies over Iranian nuclear capabilities and its missile program.

In comments to senior officials carried by state television, Khamenei also reiterated that the Islamic Republic would not negotiate with the United States on another nuclear deal.

'There won't be any war. The Iranian nation has chosen the path of resistance,' Khamenei was cited as saying by the state media.

'We don't seek a war, and they don't either. They know it´s not in their interests.'

President Trump withdrew the United States a year ago from a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and global powers under which Tehran curbed its uranium enrichment capacity, a potential pathway to a nuclear bomb, and won sanctions relief in return.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (above) said his country is not seeking war with the United States

Since then, Trump has ratcheted up sanctions on Iran, seeking to reduce its lifeblood oil exports to zero, to push Tehran into fresh negotiations on a broader arms control deal, targeting in part the Iranian ballistic missile program.

'(Such) negotiations are a poison,' Khamenei said.

The United Arab Emirates reported on Sunday that four commercial vessels including two Saudi oil tankers had been sabotaged offshore from the UAE emirate of Fujairah just outside the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. national security agencies believe proxies sympathetic to or working for Iran may have been behind the attacks.

Iran has rejected the allegation and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Tuesday that 'extremist individuals' in the U.S. government were pursuing dangerous policies, stoking a war of words with Washington over sanctions.

Trump warned on Monday Iran would 'suffer greatly' if it targeted U.S. interests after Washington deployed an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Middle East.

President Trump warned on Monday Iran would 'suffer greatly' if it targeted U.S. interests after Washington deployed an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Middle East

Coalition forces in Iraq and Syria sent conflicting signals Tuesday over Iran's alleged threat, with a British general appearing to take issue with Washington's alarms over an imminent danger posed by Tehran to the U.S. and its allies.

Major General Chris Ghika, a British spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, the coalition fighting the Islamic State group, said that they did not sense any intensified threat from Iran in the region, even though the U.S. military was boosting its forces in the Gulf.

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'There has been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria,' Ghika told reporters via teleconference at the Pentagon.

That brought a sharp retort from the U.S. Central Command, which in the past nine days has accelerated the deployment of an aircraft carrier task force to the Gulf, adding to it B-52 bombers, a Patriot missile battery and an amphibious assault ship, in the face of the alleged Iranian threat.

The image above from May 9 shows the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group being deployed to the Persian Gulf on orders from the White House

A B-52H Stratofortress bomber is being refueled in mid-air over Southwest Asia on Sunday. The White House ordered the aircraft to deploy to the Persian Gulf region

Ghika's comments 'run counter to the identified credible threats available to intelligence from U.S. and allies regarding Iranian backed forces in the region,' Central Command spokesman Captain Bill Urban said.

The mixed signals underscored questions about the U.S. ramping up its forces in the Gulf without having explained the intelligence behind the move.

On May 5, White House National Security Advisor John Bolton announced that the Pentagon was sending the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the region 'in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings' related to Iran.

In the week since, the Pentagon said it would also position a Patriot missile battery and an amphibious assault ship in the region as a warning to Tehran.

Iran has denied planning anything and U.S. allies have warned of the danger of escalation, saying it heightens the chance that an accident could set off a major conflict.

Both Washington and Tehran said Tuesday that they were not seeking war - but, in Sochi, Russia, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo again issued a warning.

'We have also made clear to the Iranians that if American interests are attacked, we will most certainly respond in an appropriate fashion.'

The news comes after an American military team claimed Iranian or Iranian-backed proxies used explosives to blow large holes in four ship (pictured, A. Michel, one of the tankers damaged) anchored off the coast of the United Arab Emirates on Sunday

Norwegian oil tanker Andrea Victory, another of the four damaged boats, pictured with a large dent in its stern on Monday morning

Ghika's comments, and the lack of any details on what Washington believes Tehran was planning, has fed suspicions among critics that President Trump's administration was firing up tensions in the region without justification.

'We've seen no change in the posture or laydown' of the Shia Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an Iraqi paramilitary group with close ties to Tehran, Ghika said.

'Of course PMF is a very broad range of groups. Many of them are compliant and we have seen no change in their posture since the recent exchange between the U.S. and Iran.'

Ghika denied he was contradicting his U.S. partners, and said the Inherent Resolve forces were already postured against a range of threats.

'I don't think we're out of step with the White House at all,' Ghika said.

But Central Command's Urban said that in fact alert levels had been stepped up due to the Iran threat.

'U.S. Central Command, in coordination with Operation Inherent Resolve, has increased the force posture level for all service members assigned to OIR in Iraq and Syria,' he said in a statement.

'As a result, OIR is now at a high level of alert as we continue to closely monitor credible and possibly imminent threats to US forces in Iraq.'